Antimafia Commission requests Catania investigation documents: Prosecution focuses on Sammartino’s double face
The parliamentary anti-mafia commission has ordered the acquisition of the acts of the investigation carried out by the anti-mafia district directorate of Catania, which led to the Pandora operation, carried out by the carabinieri against eleven politicians, municipal officials, and entrepreneurs, recipients of precautionary measures for political-mafia exchange, extortion aggravated by the mafia method, corruption aggravated for an act contrary to official duties, incitement to corruption, and disrupted freedom of tenders. The prosecutor speaks of the “business degeneration of the local government of the municipality of Tremestieri Etneo”. The investigation highlights the figure of the vice president of the Sicilian Region, Luca Sammartino, who has resigned from his position in the hands of President Renato Schifani. A prominent member of the League in the island, at the time of the events a regional deputy of the Democratic Party, Sammartino has been suspended from public office for one year for aggravated corruption. He is the main political reference of the mayor of Tremestieri Etneo Santi Rando, who was arrested for political-mafia exchange and aggravated corruption. Regarding Sammartino, the prosecutor explains, “there is concern that he is trying to shield himself from any ongoing investigations by excluding individuals with ties to organized crime from the lists he seems to have used during elections”. He also allegedly activated “surveillance and technical cleansing activities of his political secretariat offices with the assistance of Carabinieri personnel on-duty and retired, while also trying to acquire confidential information about any pending criminal proceedings against him”. The judge of Catania has reserved the right to decide on a active duty Carabinieri military, “who Sammartino allegedly employed, for a fee, to carry out technical cleansing activities in search of bugs in his offices”. The military will therefore be interrogated, following which the judge will assess the application of the precautionary measure of suspension from the exercise of public office or service, as requested by the prosecutor.
La Commissione antimafia chiede gli atti dell’inchiesta di Catania: la procura punta l’indice sul doppio volto di Sammartino
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